


The Wilderness

by lafiametta



Category: Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Slow Burn Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 20,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafiametta/pseuds/lafiametta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I absolutely cannot wait to return to Portman Square, having been to the wilderness..." </p><p>What if Nathaniel and Chingachgook had gotten to the cliffs earlier? What if the story could have ended differently?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A State of War

The metal axe blades spun wildly, meeting, so Alice thought, like a clap of thunder, and just as ominous.

Her heart fell into itself, watching Uncas, knowing he stood little chance against the skilled savagery of the Huron captain, that he would most certainly die here on the rocky promontory. _Still_ , a small voice cried within her, _he came for me_. An unforgiving reply came from her anguished heart: _And he will die for you too, you little fool_.

She didn't want to watch, turning her head in stubborn self-denial, the veil of her hair making their movements blurred and indistinct. But not watching was harder.

The force with which they struck was powerful, a flurry of sinew and stark determination. In another world, lifetimes ago, she had sat perched in an oak-lined library, her eyes widening at the etched illustration as her lips mouthed the caption: _Sauvages in a State of War_. Her fingertips had traced the rough surface of the paper, lingering over the darkened, half-clad bodies locked in perpetual combat. She had felt slightly wicked, the momentary thrill of looking upon such _strangeness_ bringing color to her cheeks. But here, everything was different. What were pictures, what were books, what was anything in her little life before she came to this place?

She didn't understand. Where was Cora? Where was Nathaniel? Why had he come alone to fight these men with nothing but a gun and an axe?

She had not seen him since the falls, as he disappeared into the roar of the water, leaving her alone, a vast emptiness still within her. His arms had wrapped firmly around her trembling body, the warmth of him, of his presence, lingering on her skin. He had murmured softly in her ear in a language she didn't know, while her numbness – a shield keeping her from blood and cannon fire and animalistic screams – melted from her. She shuddered and sobbed and cried out to no one, to everyone, to her long-dead mother, to a father she would never see again. All was terror and fear and darkness, until at last, it was not, and she was spent. She had looked up into his face, realizing that he was still there, that he had never let go, and she had closed her eyes, laying her cheek upon his chest, feeling the steadiness of his heart. And then he had gone, like a star cascading across the sky. And now he had come, to die here for her.

The last clash of metal drew her from her thoughts. And then a sound more terrible: a slice through flesh stinging the air. She saw as he looked down, the blood beginning to pool on his torso, shock and disbelief now painted upon his face. The Huron captain stood on, gazing upon his handiwork, while Uncas's eyes met hers, traveling the space between them, as if he were by her side once again. He seemed to be silently asking for forgiveness, for absolution. _I failed you_ , he seemed to whisper.

She held her breath as she tried to keep herself from crying, the pools of tears in her lower lashes threatening to spill. _Why must it end this way?_

But even so injured, he would not give in, attacking the Huron once again, forcing him to retreat, their bodies locked together and tumbling down towards the edge of the precipice. The Huron drew himself up, knife in hand, taking advantage of the young man's weakness, and raised his arm in readiness.

A gunshot rang across the cliff tops, reverberating like the peal of a church bell, the path of it so close Alice felt the hush of its breeze across her cheek. The Huron captain, poised to strike, remained still for half a moment, then collapsed upon Uncas, his unclenched knife clattering to the stone shelf and then disappearing over the edge.

Her captors turned behind them, eyes searching and fear written in their narrowed gazes. She would have seen, if she turned back, the Hurons parting in half as they fled to the safety of the cliff side and the rocks, the bodies of the ones farthest from her stumbling and gasping towards the earth. Had she been listening, she would have heard the crack of musket fire, the heavy crunch of the war club meeting flesh and bone. She would have felt the faint pull on her sleeve as the warrior beside her collapsed, his hand still reaching for her, the seizure of his gurgling breath at last fading into stillness. But Alice did not. She had not stirred.

She took a small step towards the rocky shelf, her brown eyes wide and placid as a summer sky. The Huron captain lay unmoving, blood pouring from a small hole in his back. A faint groan emerged from underneath the body. _He's alive._

In a tangle of skirts, Alice leapt onto the rock, her small hands pushing the Huron, however ineffectually, away from Uncas. The weight of it seemed too much, as she shoved and finally rolled him onto his back and then out of reach. With one glance downwards, she cried out. Blood was everywhere, staining her hands and knees with smears of crimson.

A hand clutched at her wrist, entwining her alabaster skin in a grasp of burnished copper.

"Miss Alice…"


	2. Lifeblood

A blur of inchoate movement around her, the press of bodies, raised voices that seemed somehow just beyond her hearing, as if she were underwater. But time remained still, each moment heavy and ponderous, the only sensation the weight of his hand in her own, the feel of the steady but faint beat of his lifeblood on her palm. She did not turn her gaze from his, nor he from hers, their eyes held together by a strange calmness, all while the blood ebbing from his body continued to soak into the layers of her skirts.

Her shoulder was being shaken. Pulled from Uncas's sight, she looked up at Nathaniel, his jaw clenched tight with anxiety. Her forehead knit in confusion: it was as if he were speaking to her in another language, until she realized that he _was_. Realizing his mistake, he switched to English.

"You all right?"

She nodded, both their heads then turning down towards Uncas, whose gaze had turned weak and unfocused. She noticed Chingachgook standing on the other side of the rocky shelf, his fingers grasped tight around the handle of his war club. Before she had even gotten a chance to ask about her sister, Cora had appeared over her other shoulder, running the last few steps towards her and finally throwing her arms around Alice's small frame. Alice had turned to embrace her, but kept Uncas's hand in hers, refusing to sever the link between them. Having ascertained that nothing was physically wrong with her sister, Cora turned her attention to the wounded man lying prostrate on the rock.

Nathaniel and Chingachgook had been arguing in their language, clearly over what to do about Uncas; turning to English, they brought Cora into their deliberations.

Alice had stopped listening. She gazed back down again at Uncas, who was looking in her direction but seemed to see right through her, his eyes glassy and unmoving. His hand seemed slightly colder and she grasped it tighter, imparting what little warmth she had to give.

Pieces of conversation drifted by her as she sat quiescently by his side.

"…lost too much blood. He can't be moved…"

"…not a proper surgery…"

"…can you at least…"

"…need hot water, some clean material. And a sharp knife…"

Alice watched as Chingachgook scrambled down the rocky path, determination set hard on his stony features. Nathaniel dropped to a crouch and began to search through the men's packs. She looked up towards her sister.

"What should I do, Cora?"

"Stay with him."

Alice obediently nodded, even though she would not have wanted to leave him in any place. The connection that had been made between them when he grasped her wrist had yet to be broken, and she thought, however childish the notion seemed, that if she let go, he would somehow slip away, and not return.

Soon enough, Nathaniel had found what he was looking for and had begun to start a fire, and Chingachgook had returned, uncharacteristically out of breath, a full canteen of water in hand. Preparations began in earnest, Cora gathering clean squares of animal hide, Nathaniel handing over to her a sewing needle and what appeared to be a few lengths of waxed string.

"Catgut," he replied to Alice's inquisitive gaze. She must have looked horrified. "From a deer," he explained.

They had moved her so that Uncas's head was resting in her lap, his hand still held in hers. _How strange it all was_ , she thought, as Cora cut away the remaining fabric of his shirt and began to inspect the bloody gash along his midsection. _How decidedly improper_. She thought of the red-bricked façades of Portman Square, what her circle of friends and acquaintances would have thought, seeing her so, a slatternly mess of dirt and blood, the head of a savage so close to her person. But there was nothing of this place that could be considered in any way proper.

Uncas groaned as Cora cleaned the wound, his head turning deeper into Alice's thigh. She put her palm onto his forehead, moving his head and shoulders so they might lay straight. His eyes fluttered then closed. Moving her hand back, she began to smooth out his straight, black hair, a soothing motion she associated with a beloved governess of her childhood. Though still unconscious, he cried out as Cora began to apply the sutures. She silently willed for Cora to be as quick about it as she could.

Cora worked deliberately, carefully placing each stitch, tying the ends together and cutting off the excess thread. Alice was surprised and impressed by such methodical work; it was something she associated with their hard-headed father, whereas she and her sister had concerned themselves mostly with social engagements, poetry and drawing, and all other occupations of well-accomplished young women.

At last, she had finished, a neat line of knots sprayed along Uncas's torso, and she stood up, running the back of her blood-stained hand across her brow.

While she had been working, Nathaniel and Chingachgook had been assembling some sort of stretcher, consisting of a blanket wrapped around two straight tree limbs. They came over to the makeshift-surgery, clearly intending to lift Uncas up and onto the stretcher.

Cora looked at her sister, her eyes soft and full of concern.

"You have to let go."

Alice looked down at the young man still laying on her lap, the broad planes of his face relaxed into sleep. She took a breath and unknotted her fingers from his, laying his hand upon his heart.

 _Please come back_.


	3. Huron Lands

They moved as fast as they dared, as they were still in the Huron lands; the captain might be dead, but they were fair prey for any war party that might come across them, as few and encumbered as they now were.

Between them, the two men carried Uncas, who still had not stirred. Despite the weight, their step was agile and sure-footed and they made almost no noise. Alice envied them: carrying no pack, she could barely keep up, her feet seemingly finding every outcropping or fallen tree branch on which it was possible to trip. She wanted to stop, or at least to slow down, but it was clear from the strangely identical set in their jaws that her request, if posed, would be denied.

She had no idea where they were going. The only imperative seemed to be to keep moving.

The dappled afternoon sun brightened, then began to pale. A short time later, the western sky erupted into a blaze of golden orange streaks set atop an expanse of pink and violet, framed by the dark outlines of the treetops. Alice was transfixed, her eyes barely glancing at the trail, as she lost her footing and almost tumbled to the ground. Had she not seen such things before in her life? Surely if skies had looked like this, she reasoned, she would have noticed.

Still they pressed on.

Only once night had fallen, the forest depths made impenetrable and fathomless, did they stop to rest. Nathaniel led them to a small cleft in the hillside surrounded by low-branched trees and bushes, which he claimed offered the best level of protection.

There would be no fire, as it was deemed too dangerous, and their dinner consisted of a few small pieces of dried deer meat, unceremoniously washed down with the remaining water from Chingachgook's canteen. Her stomach growled in protest, though she tried to ignore it.

The mood was quiet, pensive, their thoughts too wrapped up in the events of the day to give much consideration to conversation. Alice wanted to take off her shoes and rub her feet, but didn't like the idea of everyone watching her. Instead, her eyes kept drifting over to where they had carefully laid the stretcher, where she could just make out the small rise and fall of his chest in the moonlight.

Cora began to make preparations to sleep. A blanket was laid out, apparently to be shared by Alice and Cora. Alice was glad, at least, for the physical closeness of her sister, but watched with dismay as Nathaniel promptly took the space on the ground next to Cora, inviting and receiving her into his arms. Alice turned onto her side, away from them, trying not to feel hurt, trying to feel happy for them, both unsuccessfully. She squeezed her eyes and tried to relax into sleep.

The dreaming had been laced with fire and blood, with the pitted face of the Huron captain, knife in hand. She must have woken up, her eyes now adjusting to the darkness, hearing behind her the soft snores of Nathaniel. For some reason, one she couldn't even begin to explain to herself, she clumsily scrambled to her feet, shuffling the few paces over to where Uncas slept, still unmoving. She lay down next to him, not touching him, but close enough to hear him breathing, to see the spindly lines of the tribal tattoos decorating his forearm.

She closed her eyes for a moment, almost surrendering to sleep, but opened them, only to see his head had turned, his bottomless dark eyes looking directly at hers.

She opened her mouth to protest, to explain, to say something, but he gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Instead he reached down to take her hand, wrapping his strong fingers in hers. And then his eyes closed again.


	4. First Light

Her eyes shivered open to the sound of life stirring in the reaches of the forest, the plaintive cooing of mourning doves suffusing the misty, blue-grey sky. Sleepily, she rubbed her eyes with her knuckle.

Alice felt something under her head, solid and warm. Opening her eyes wider, in an instant remembering how she had come to lay where she was, she turned her gaze upwards to see the form of the young man beside her, his arm clasped around her shoulders, her body leaning half-way onto his.

She remained very still, her breath held tight within her ribcage.

They were touching in a way that she did not want to think about, in a way that made her heart beat so loud she would have sworn he could hear it. She could justify the times they had touched before; there had been a purely human need for comfort, there had been danger and panic to keep at bay. But what was there now? What had she become that she could turn towards him in the night, cleaving to him as a wife might, to this man, so dark and strange, so manifestly _different_?

Men did not touch Alice in this way.

Out in society less than a year, she had attended balls and assemblies where the young men might have too much to drink, and be freer with their hands than propriety occasioned. Once, in a darkened corner, the music and laughter fogging her senses, a young officer had put his hand on her tightly-cinched waist and moved in to kiss her, but she had wriggled free and fled from him. In all her years, her father was the only man she had ever embraced, which was as it should be.

But what was she to do? How was she to remove herself from his side? And how was she to make him understand that it had all been a mistake, that she was not in the habit of doing such things, that he should not think of her in such a way?

She rolled onto her back, feigning to stretch and yawn. His arm released her shoulders, though blessedly he did not wake, and she quickly sat up, scampering over to where she had lain beside Cora. From the corner of her sight, so still she had thought him part of the landscape, she caught a glimpse of the watchful Chingachgook, leaning against a paper-white birch tree, his eyes narrowed and hard as they found hers. Her cheeks burned as she lay down on her side, her legs curling protectively into her chest.

She waited for what seemed like hours for the rest of them to stir.

At last, Nathaniel rose by the first light of the morning, shaking Cora gently and whispering something in her ear. Alice kept her eyes closed, even as her sister, now up and alert, went straight to look on Uncas, even as she heard him groan awake, even as she listened to Cora beset him with questions and instructions.

"Alice."

She opened her eyes, but kept still, her back turned towards them.

"Alice, wake up. I need your help."

Alice tottered to her feet and walked hesitantly in their direction. Uncas was sitting up, grimacing and leaning heavily against Cora, as she was attempting with some difficulty to wrap a clean strip of cloth around his wound.

"Here, help me tie this."

Alice kneeled on the ground, staring downward, staring left, right, anywhere but his eyes or his bare chest. She knotted the ends of the cloth together tightly, almost from touch alone, and as she finished, her fingertips inadvertently grazed his skin. She pulled back as if they were on fire.

"Can you get the shirt as well?"

Her hands shook a little as she took it from Cora, gathering the fabric around the collar, leaning towards him as he lowered his head. She didn't understand: did he remember nothing? How could he not see her there, blushing to the roots of her hair, her heart quavering in her chest like a cornered animal?

She lowered the calico shirt over his head and then held out each of the sleeves as he stiffly tucked in his arms. Reaching her arms around his neck, she gently pulled out his hair from under the collar, releasing it into a gleaming spray across his back.

"Hssstttt!" The low-pitched sound Nathaniel made was barely human, but it caught their attention, both their faces turning towards him, cheeks almost brushing against each other.

"Someone's coming," Uncas whispered.


	5. Against the Rocks

Nathaniel's movements were quick and assured, as he gathered up their gear from the small clearing, but she saw some fear within the whiteness of his eyes, which did little to quell the panic now rising in her throat.

Uncas, his hand grasped around his rifle, tried to rise to his feet, but then doubled over. His face contorted into pain, but still he made no noise. Nathaniel crouched on the ground next to him, throwing Uncas's left arm around his shoulder and indicating wordlessly to Cora that she should do the same with the other. They hoisted him up, Cora's legs shaking slightly with the weight, leaving Alice to collect the blanket that had lain under him. Her eyes took in the clearing, undisturbed, as if they had never been there, and she realized that she had been looking for the older man. _What had happened to Chingachgook?_

She might have asked, but Nathaniel's face was hard and set, as he focused on bearing most of Uncas's weight against his body once they began to move further into the woods.

_What was out there?_

Alice followed as they maneuvered up the rise of the hill, the large trees giving way to scrubby brush and deep-set rock formations. Her eyes squinted into the half-risen morning sun as it rippled through the sky, bathing the world below in soft golden light. Nathaniel moved them towards a cluster of shoulder-high stones, arranged in a small half-circle, and eased Uncas down against one of the rocks, leaving him in the care of Cora. He took up a half-crouch on the ground in front of them, his rifle primed and ready in his hands.

Alice sat on the ground next to Cora, tucking her knees under her chin, suddenly feeling very cold.

"Where is your father?" she half-whispered to Nathaniel's back.

His head turned towards her, but his body remained in a state of readiness.

"He was scouting earlier and came across a party of four or five," Nathaniel replied in clipped tones. "Wasn't sure if they were following us or just going somewhere."

"Did something happen to him?" Her voice rose with an edge of panic.

The corner of his mouth curled slightly upwards.

"I'd worry more about them, miss." He paused. "He's getting out in front of them, making a false trail in the other direction. Once he's lost them, he'll double back and meet up with us here."

He appeared so confident in this that it seemed pointless to question him further. She laid her head back against the rock, closing her eyes and letting her breathing turn even.

She must have fallen asleep, as her eyes opened on the sight of Cora keeling down on the ground next to Nathaniel, her hand and head resting on his shoulder. She turned to her right, where slightly behind her Uncas leaned, sleeping against the stones, his chin tucked against his chest and his hand still wrapped around the long barrel of his gun. Despite the weapon, he looked peaceful and undisturbed. She looked down to see wet blood seeping into the center of his shirt.

Instinctually, she scrambled towards him, his eyes opening immediately with her movement. As she crouched by him, he followed her line of vision, inhaling sharply as he saw the dark stain spreading across the fabric. He pulled up his shirt as she gently stretched back the cotton bandage, her eyes looking for any damage to the stitches. But they had held, surprisingly enough, the blood simply trickling from the spaces in between them, clearly brought on by his exertions.

She looked up at him, relief written on her face, their eyes catching and then settling on one another. She felt paralyzed, warmth flooding her cheeks, a not dissimilar heat filling her stomach and rising upwards towards her chest. She snatched her hands away, turning her face from him as she rose to her feet. As she stepped forward, she nearly ran into the imposing form of Chingachgook, who caught her pale arms in his grasp, but then released her just as quickly. She moved to the other side of the rocks, her face still flushed, as she listened to raised voices in a language not her own, Chingachgook's words unintelligible but the tone unmistakable.

Nathaniel moved to join the other two men, the danger now seemingly past, while Alice found her sister, and wrapped her arms in Cora's.

The men conversed as the two sisters sat side-by-side, Alice leaning slightly into Cora and Cora's cheek resting against Alice's head. The noise was slightly soothing to Alice, the words having no meaning, seemingly a rushing water of sounds, and containing none of the tension she had heard earlier.

After a time, Nathaniel turned towards them. Clearly something had been decided.

"We can't take you to Albany," he said. "At least not yet."

Alice was shocked. _Certainly he couldn't mean that they would spend more time than was necessary in this wild place?_

"It's not more than two or three nights to get us out of the Huron lands, but we have to get Uncas somewhere safer soon. Somewhere he can heal up. But the nearest town is too far, as is the summer camp of the Delaware." He paused, running his hand over his forehead. "Once he's better, we can take you back."

"Where will we go?" Cora asked calmly. Alice whirled to face her sister: _how could she be agreeing to this?_

"The cabin we came across, before the fort. It's been burnt out, but we can repair it, make it sound. At least for a month or two."

Alice's eyes widened. _People had been murdered at that cabin. This is where they want to take us?_

But Cora did not look fazed. Alice turned back to look at Nathaniel.

"There's really no other choice," he said, his voice quieter.

Alice knew there was a choice. She could walk and walk until she could go no further, until she found the edge of this savage country. The thought of finally going home made her chest ache. Hoping for some support, her eyes sought Uncas's, but he was looking down at the ground, refusing to meet her gaze.

She wanted to cry, but she wouldn't do it in front of them.

Nathaniel nodded, as if they were all in agreement, and then turned back towards his father and brother. Cora took Alice's hand, rubbing the girl's thin fingers in her palm, but Alice said nothing.


	6. Warm Currents

Alice felt the summer heat like a weight upon her shoulders, her limbs turned heavy and slow, a perpetual dampness settling on the nape of her neck. The air was full and ripe, as slowly the sky dimmed and the rolling undersides of the clouds turned grey. She almost hoped for rain, for the heavens to open wide, even though there would be nowhere to hide from it once it began, if only for the small relief it would bring.

They would have to stop soon, she knew. Nathaniel and Chingachgook were clearly growing weary, the weight of Uncas still braced between them. He had not wanted to be carried at all and at first had protested vociferously against the idea. But Nathaniel's resolve had been stronger than the younger man's embarrassment, and, having finally been made to understand that he would not be allowed to risk further injury to himself, for the last few days he had submitted to being borne along.

At night, the heat had lifted slightly, as they made their camp near a copse of trees or beside the bank of a narrow stream. Their meal consisted of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of dried deer meat that Nathaniel carried in his pack, together with a handful of ripened berries or nuts that they frequently found along the way. By the time they settled down to rest, Alice was often so fatigued that she struggled to stay awake, her eyes repeatedly fluttering open with determined effort. Her mind drowning out the ramble of conversation, she found that her unfocused gaze continued to linger on Uncas, taking in the smooth line of his jaw as he turned towards Nathaniel, the stillness of his hands laying in the bend of his lap. She had not forgotten that morning in the clearing, before the sun had broken, the feel of his arm around her, of the violent threshing of her heart. She had felt reckless continuing to glance at him so, but how else was she to ensure that he was not looking at her in a too familiar manner?

Alice dreamed of birds in flight, the tufts of their wingtips splayed open as they latched onto warm currents of air.

The endless hours spent walking, simply being alone with her thoughts, had soothed her mind. Two months was not such a long time, she reasoned. It was not as if they meant to keep her here forever. And what a story they would have to tell, once she and Cora were back in England, enough to keep the fashionable set in Mayfair occupied for half the season.

Stretching her arms over her head, her tired muscles aching with the strain, she looked up: the clouds now turned dark and menacing, the sky itself almost ready to burst open.

They suddenly crossed into an open field as the forest seemed to melt away behind them. To her left she saw a few rows of dried-out crops, a split-rail fence making a half-hearted effort to separate the civilized world from the wilds beyond. She recognized this place. Though no longer covered in a corona of smoke, she saw as she moved closer that it was the same half-scorched log house they had come across on their way to the fort.

Nathaniel and Chingachgook stopped a little ways in front of her, looking at something near the tree line on the other side of the open clearing. When she followed their line of sight and squinted, she could see several mounds of earth, grass growing around but not on them. From each emerged a crude wooden cross.

Nathaniel closed his eyes for a moment and nodded.

"Good man, Jack," he said, in a voice so low Alice barely heard it.

The copper sky suddenly lit up with a crack, the sound both deafening and still, and then warm rain began to pummel the earth with a growing intensity. It soaked into the ground, splashing up against her ankles, and flattened her hair against her face.

They ran towards the ruined cabin, the only visible shelter, Alice making little yelps as she moved, her gathered skirts filling her hands. She saw that half of the roof still stood, as she scrambled up the porch steps and then inside. The rain and darkness were making it difficult to see, but a pair of hands grabbed on to hers, pulling her deeper into the recesses under the protruding beams. A blaze of lightning briefly illuminated the sky and she saw she was looking into the deep-set eyes of Chingachgook. Saying nothing, he led her towards the back wall and deposited her, their hands releasing as Alice slid down to the wooden floor in a heap of sodden skirts. He turned and left, not looking back.

Alice's eyes began to adjust to the darkness. But before she saw him, leaning against the wall less than a pace from her, she had heard the sound of Uncas's breathing.

It was all too much: she was exhausted, distressed by too many things to count, and soaked to the marrow of her bones. She dropped fully onto the floor, squeezing her eyes shut and pulling her arms taut around her legs, as she tried not to think about anything.

Another pair of hands grasped her by her ribcage – these different than the first ones, somehow strong but gentle – and pulled her back a little, until her head and shoulders lay across his thigh. A hand moved over to her shoulder, and she felt the warmth through the thinness of her sleeve.

She thought to get up, to move herself somewhere else, but she didn't. Time was now measured by the unhurried rhythm of his breath, as her curled body relaxed into sleep.

_Just this once_ , she repeated to herself, _just this one time_. What did it matter, anyway, when she would soon enough be back in England?


	7. Salvaging

The next morning dawned bright and clear, the summer squall having passed over them in the night.

Nathaniel and Chingachgook had gotten straight to work with the sunrise; when Alice emerged from the cabin she saw them dismantling one of the fences and throwing the loosened beams into a pile. She turned her head and gazed back at the structure: to her it seemed a blackened, half-destroyed wreck, whereas all they must have seen when they looked on it was a long list of tasks.

She was put to work drawing water from the well, which she and Cora then used to begin cleaning the interior, washing away ash and soot from the floor and the walls. They threw out the ruined furniture and, after soaking them thoroughly, handed the charred cast-iron cooking pots over to Uncas, who was visibly pleased to at last be made useful. He sat outside in the glaring mid-day sun, whistling as he scraped away the built-up residue with his knife.

The two women sorted through the rest of the belongings left inside the house. They found a chest made of solid oak, apparently undamaged, and Alice's heart sank when she opened it and saw on top a crudely-made stuffed doll, clothed in an embroidered green jacket and petticoat. Alice set the doll aside, gently placing it on the floor, and turned back to the contents of the chest. Inside were quilts, a few men's shirts, and a pale yellow cotton skirt that looked like it had never been worn. She stood up, holding the skirt in front of her own, which was covered in dirt and grass stains and still held the ruddy silhouette of blood. Checking to make sure that no one besides Cora could see her, she unlaced her skirt from the back and let it drop to the floor. Even in the warmth of the day, she shivered a little. Quickly she pulled the new skirt on, only to discover, as Cora fastened the waist ties for her, that it was several inches too short, the bones of her ankles displayed scandalously. She sighed. It would do for now, and it was not as if she would be making social calls any time in the near future. In Albany she would get something new, something proper.

Gathering up her old skirt, she went outside to throw it on the pile of discarded goods. Uncas looked up at her, his warm eyes in an instant turning stony and dark.

"Where did you get that?" he asked, his gaze fastened on her lower half.

"Inside..." Her voice wavered a little. "I found it."

He said nothing, but continued to stare. She started to blush.

"It didn't belong to anyone," she offered.

"It might have belonged to someone once, for all you know," he replied, his voice cold. He turned back to the metal pot in his hands, the conversation apparently over.

She stood there for a moment, biting the inside of her cheek, and turned to go back inside. Cora was still in the back corner of the house, looking for anything salvageable. She watched silently as Alice stripped off the skirt, replacing it with her old one, and then folded it, put it back into the chest, and shut the lid.

The afternoon passed quickly, in a haze of activity, Alice keeping her hands and thoughts occupied. Late in the day, Nathaniel sent her over to the small plot of corn fields to see if there was anything still left worth eating; if there was, he said, she should have Uncas show her how to shuck the ears so that they all might enjoy something fresh for supper.

With a basket on her hip, she pulled down each dun-colored stalk, ignoring the ears filled with mold or ones that had been pillaged by birds. She managed to find a few that seemed edible, although her lack of familiarity with planted corn made this conviction less than certain. Placing the last one in the basket, she looked down at her hands: they were filthy, covered with soot marks, little scrapes and scratches marring her skin. She tried to wipe them on the sides of her skirt.

She would be glad of the chance to speak to Uncas, even if nothing was said about what had happened earlier. Surprisingly, the idea of him being upset with her sat very ill and, as she thought more on it, she felt increasingly worse about her actions. To be honest, she had not really considered the fact that the article of clothing in question might have belonged to someone before she took it, that the original owner was no longer in a position to reclaim it, and that this might be distressing to him. The thought of righting things between them made her hasten her step.

Halfway back to the cabin, she saw Chingachgook, who had emerged from behind the woodpile a short way from the entrance, heading in one direction but turning towards hers once he saw her coming. He quickly intercepted her.

"He's busy now," he said, nodding in the direction of Uncas, still occupied outside.

"I'll take care of that." The basket was out of her hands before she even had a chance to speak. He continued to look at her matter-of-factly.

"Your sister needs you."

He seemed to be waiting for her to leave, so she did, looking once over her shoulder to see him approach Uncas, the younger man looking up at the older, words passing between them that she couldn't hear.

But Cora didn't seem to need her at all. She was starting a fire in the hearth, which being made of stone had survived structurally intact, feeding the small flames with kindling and then adding firewood to for them to latch upon. Alice sat down on a rough-hewn bench with her elbows planted on the repaired table, thoroughly perplexed.

Soon enough, the shucked corn emerged, brought in by Nathaniel, cooked over the flame by Cora, and finally ready to be served, along with the obligatory dried deer meat. Nathaniel and Chingachgook carried in Uncas, one man under each of his shoulders, Nathaniel steering him towards the free space next to Alice on the bench. They left him turned the wrong way, however, facing away from the table. Alice froze; she could sense the nearness of him but didn't want to look up, for fear of seeing the same expresssion on his face as earlier, which somehow, at this level of proximity, would be too much to bear.

He gingerly lifted his legs up and swiveled around, moving his hand onto her shoulder for support, squeezing it gently, then releasing it as he set his legs down. She glanced up through her lashes to see the briefest of smiles appear before he turned back towards the others.

Even half-way opened to the darkened canopy of night, the space felt warm to Alice, filled as it was with the light of the fire and the closeness of her companions.


	8. Sisterly Affection

Within a week or so, the composition of their days had fallen into a predictable rhythm, the cooking of meals becoming the domain of Cora, with the assistance of Alice, as Nathaniel and Chingachgook continued to make repairs to the roof of the cabin, laying out new support beams and painstakingly adding layer upon layer of wooden shingles. On occasion, Chingachgook left the work in the hands of Nathaniel and went off on his own to hunt for game, bringing back a few quail or a rabbit for all of them to eat.

There were also those times in the height of the afternoon, once the men had come down off the roof to enjoy an hour or two's relief from the sun, when Nathaniel and Cora quietly slipped away from the others and disappeared into the forest beyond. No one said anything about it, nor commented when they returned, always separately. Alice felt it was not her place to broach the subject, as Cora had not taken Alice into her confidence, which had often been the case between them, considering the variances in age and temperament that separated the two. She did worry that Cora might be forming too strong an attachment, which would only make it harder when they had to leave.

Sometimes Uncas too would be gone, his injury having healed enough that he could take short walks unaided, leaving Alice alone with Chingachgook, in whose company she always felt vaguely guilty, without ever quite being able to determine why. She tried for the most part to avoid him.

Alice's life had been made slightly brighter by the discovery within the cabin's small larder of some tins of tea and a jar of honey. She felt half-way civilized as she sat at the cabin's table, her hands warmed by a steaming pewter mug, the smell reminding her of rainy English afternoons, of straight-backed chairs and brocade tablecloths.

Late one morning, Cora found Alice sitting just so inside the cabin. They were, for the moment, alone, Nathaniel and Chingachgook having gone to a nearby stream in search of fish and Uncas strolling briefly in the open clearing beyond. She took the seat next to Alice, but kept her eyes down, not meeting her sister's gaze.

"May I speak with you?"

Alice made a little nod, her throat somehow very dry. Cora paused briefly, at that moment finally looking up at Alice.

"Nathaniel has asked me to marry him."

Alice's brow knotted. This was not what she had expected.

"And I've agreed."

Cora extended her hand and wrapped it around her sister's.

"Alice, I'm not going home. I'm going to stay here with him."

Alice pulled her hand back as if she had been slapped.

"You can stay with us, if you like. You don't have to go back alone."

Alice stood up suddenly, the harsh scrape of the bench against the wooden floor echoing in the air.

"Alice…" Cora said, almost pleadingly. But Alice had gone, rushing quickly out the door and tearing off across the open clearing.

She did not stop until she felt the reach of the trees surrounding her, until she felt completely hidden in their shadows.

She felt her breath catching in her throat, her lungs pumping but air somehow not reaching them. Leaning over, her hands placed on her thighs, she tried to breathe normally.

She felt so many things at once: anger, disappointment, sadness, and even a little embarrassment, as she considered how she had just behaved. Why was she such a child? She should be pleased for her sister, happy in her happiness, but instead all that was left in her heart was a gathering sense of betrayal. How could she choose this life, in this place, over their lives back in England? Was her attachment to this man so great that she would damage the bonds of sisterly affection? Alice knew she was being selfish, as she rubbed away tears from the edges of her eyes, but in this moment she didn't care. She wanted to go home and she wanted Cora with her. And now only one of those things was possible. As for the idea that Alice would stay here, certainly the very notion was preposterous. Was she to spend the rest of her life traipsing through the wilderness with them, Chingachgook forever eyeing her suspiciously, Uncas's disconcerting glances filling her with strange and uncomfortable thoughts?

She stood up, wiping her damp cheekbones with the back of her hand. She would be returning alone, then. It was a fairly terrifying prospect, but truly what choice did she have?


	9. Strange Magic

A sense of numbness followed Alice as she stepped out of the shelter of the forest, a feeling that stayed with her all that night, and the next day, and the next. She completed the tasks that were asked of her, ate the food put in front of her, and politely responded to anything said to her, but the space where her heart beat felt empty. The thought of leaving Cora, of abandoning her to this foreign land, filled her with sorrow, yet she sensed even beyond that the undefined edges of some darker, more subterranean heartache.

Early one afternoon she was returning from the stream, two newly-scoured cooking-pots dangling from her hands, each foot taking one mechanical step in front of the other, when she saw Uncas, sitting on the porch step, looking for all the world like he was waiting just for her. He said nothing, but paused, then jerked his head in the direction of the woods just off to his side.

She stopped for a moment, temporarily startled. He nodded towards the woods again, this time giving her a more imploring look, his lips marked with a small smile of amusement. Alice knew she should be affronted by his impudence in making such an invitation; this was what custom dictated. But she was more intrigued by the fact that for a moment, her protective shell of listlessness had been broken, and that, if she were being completely honest, she was a little curious as to why he had sought her out.

He stood up stiffly – she could see that he was still not fully healed – and moved closer to her, taking the pots from her hands and leaving them in a neat stack on the porch. Turning back towards her, he held out his hand. She took it, feeling the warmth and strength of his fingers as they wrapped around hers.

They made their way slowly to the forest's edge, Alice trying to replicate Uncas's steady and deliberative steps and succeeding only fitfully.

A dozen paces past the treeline, she caught his eye, ready to ask where they were headed. He put a finger up to his lips and made a small hushing sound, as he pulled her further into the leafy depths of overhanging branches. A few moments later, he slowed, crouching slightly closer to the ground and placing each step silently into the earth before taking another, while indicating that she should do the same.

The air was still, golden light filtering brilliantly through to the forest floor. They stopped several feet from an ancient gnarled oak, whose tangled roots emerged half-formed from the earth and made deep hollows around the base of the tree. It was there that he pointed.

Alice saw, as she peered over the root's edge, the small, white-dappled form of a fawn. Curled up in such a way, it resembled nothing more than a statue, the down of its sorrel-colored fur merely a hatching of tiny brushstrokes. But it was alive, for it trembled slightly, even as its limbs stayed rigid. Huge black eyes stared up at her, the pupils round and dilated.

She turned to face him, the traces of a smile stirring along the corners of her mouth.

"Why doesn't it run?" she whispered.

"She's waiting," he replied.

"What for?"

"She's too young to go far, so her mother left her to look for food. She won't move at all until the doe comes back, no matter what happens."

"Not even if I got closer?"

Uncas paused, his eyes somehow softening as his gaze drifted down towards the ground.

"She'll stay exactly where she is. She won't go anywhere."

Alice turned back to look at the fawn again. It seemed almost cruel to frighten it further by moving closer. She watched for a moment the tiny expansions and contractions of its ribcage, the patterned whorl of fur along its spine. How small it was, how fragile! She felt an acute sense of wonder, as if the space around her had slowly been filled with a strange magic. A sweeping smile broke out across her face, her wide eyes ignited with a delicate illumination.

She turned towards him again, glancing down at their hands and realizing that they were still joined. The air between them suddenly seemed charged, full of something invisible yet potent. She didn't want to move, for fear of upsetting it.

He gazed down at her, looking at her in a way that she could never recall a man having looked at her before. She wanted it to stop immediately. She wanted it to go on forever.

A rapid fluttering of wings and rustled leaves from a nearby tree pulled them from their reverie; the spell had been broken.

"We should go back," she said, gently extracting her hand from his.

Uncas simply nodded, turning back towards the direction from which they had come, his face free of any expression.


	10. Vauxhall

Later that night, after the hearth-fire had been banked and the occupants of the cabin settled in to rest, Alice found she could not sleep. Wrapped up in a quilt, the bottom of her pale feet exposed to the air, she felt the form of Cora next to her giving off a faint warmth. The two sisters had continued to share the cabin's one bed, despite Cora's new affianced status, while the two brothers slept on the floor nearby. Chingachgook preferred to sleep outside when the weather was fair, as it had been for several nights.

Her body was exhausted, but her thoughts kept racing, her eyes simply refusing to stay closed. She sighed in frustration and rolled over onto her other side.

What had happened that afternoon had been a mistake, she knew. It had been kind of Uncas to show her the fawn, but she should have never gone with him unescorted nor should she have allowed the glances between them to last as long as they did. The way he had looked at her, her chest tightening as she remembered, was far too bold, and would have been so even were he a straight-laced English gentleman, which he decidedly was not.

She would admit that he was handsome, in his own way – with fathomless dark brown eyes that seemed to look upon the world with a measured calmness, the full line of his mouth balanced by a wide expanse of cheekbones – even though she never would have thought, before she came here, that a native man could possibly be considered so.

Even his clothing, which had appeared so strange to her when they had first met, with its lack of modesty, its lack of all those articles of dress deemed necessary and proper to a man, seemed less foreign, almost familiar. The fact that he only seemed to own two shirts, which would have been unthinkable for anyone in Alice's previous acquaintance, somehow charmed her, his matter-of-fact disinterest in material excess or ornamentation surprisingly appealing.

Despite such admissions, she still had to acknowledge the unbridgeable gulf between them. She was who she was and he was who he was; these were indisputable facts. In the face of them, what did it matter how she might feel?

Alice sat up slowly and moved her feet onto the floor, the unfinished wood abrasive on her bare skin. With the quilt still wrapped around her shoulders, she made her way past the sleeping figures of Nathaniel and Uncas, out the front door, and onto the small raised porch. The night sky was a vast canvas of velvet black and midnight blue, the stars a brilliant dusting of infinitesimally tiny jewels set along its surface. She sat, curled up on the edge of the porch, staring up at the immensity of it all.

She could feel her English life, the one she had before this place, slowly fading, as if it had merely been the creation of her imagination, the product of fevered dreams. She tried for a moment to recollect something, anything, a memory to latch onto that might tether her back to the world she had known. A picture emerged, half-formed, from the miasma of her thoughts. It seemed like a lifetime ago; had it only been last spring?

_The night air was still warm along the main promenade of Vauxhall Gardens, the lamps set along the path illuminating the way. The two girls had escaped from their hawk-eyed governesses and now giggled and grasped each other's arms tightly, despite the imposing hoop petticoats emerging from each hip. Alice Munro and Caroline Powlett, one clad in blue silk, the other in cream, inseparable since they were eight years old, closer than sisters._

_Caroline loved Vauxhall, milling with fashionable society among the pavilions and genteel entertainments, visiting the picture galleries and marveling at the fireworks displays. In all truth, Alice preferred Ranelagh, even though it was almost double the price of admission, as the clientele were generally of higher quality, but, as it almost always was, she was happy to let Caroline have her way._

_They had lost their guardians somewhere among the throngs of the Turkish pavilion as they had all stopped briefly to sample the strawberry ices. From there, the pair headed towards the Rotunda, which would soon be crowded in anticipation of the evening's orchestral performance. Alice's governess did not approve of the orchestra, in particular of Handel – featured heavily on the program that night – who she decried for his pernicious inclination towards the Italianate style._

_Alice's eyes were caught by a brightly-lit exhibition to her left, which, according to the banner, was showcasing curiosities from the far reaches of Britain's dominions. Among the promised marvels was a creature known as a raccoon – what this was, Alice had no conception – a red man from the Americas, and several giant apes from Borneo. There was even to be a genuine Hottentot. Caroline pulled at her elbow, complaining that they would be late, but Alice took no notice; instead she made her way to the exhibition entrance, pulling two small silver pennies from her pocket and exchanging them for a ticket._

_With Caroline following begrudgingly behind, they moved from display to display, Alice growing increasingly more disappointed. The raccoon was asleep, tucked in the far reaches of its cage, only a striped tail visible in the torch-light, while the single ape seemed sick and malnourished, its thinning fur matted with dark mud. A hand-lettered sign explained that the Hottentot had died last week. On the final platform, Alice could make out the imposing figure of a strangely-dressed man; she was grateful that at least this last exhibit would be as promised._

_As she approached, she saw that he wore tan leather trousers, combined with two brightly-colored squares of fabric that hung from the front and the back of a waistcord. His top half was covered by a thin cotton shirt that opened half-way down his chest, his hands carrying an axe and a plain-looking knife with a wooden handle._

_All in all, Alice was fairly impressed until he raised his arm, the cuff of his sleeve falling down towards his elbow, revealing a space on his forearm where the skin shifted suddenly from dark to pale. Looking more closely at him, she realized that his visible parts had clearly been covered with brown grease-paint, a sandy tuft of hair now escaping from underneath his long black wig. He caught her gaze and grinned at her with missing teeth._

_She turned and fled, Caroline finally catching up to her back at the garden's central path. Alice could not articulate why exactly she was so upset, but she stayed silent the rest of the evening, her eyes downcast and meek even after they were found and soundly reprimanded by their over-worried governesses._

Alice remembered that when her father's letter had arrived, a few weeks later, requesting that she and Cora join him as he took up his command along the colonial frontier, she had been excited by the idea of finally seeing those things she had only read about in books. It was to be real this time, not a cheaply-made simulacrum. It was to be an adventure.

And now she was here, staring off into the unbound horizon, where everything was on its head, where nothing made any sense at all.


	11. Deserters

The brunt of the summer's heat was abating, leaving in its wake cool, crisp mornings, the edges of the leaves fading ever so slightly into gold.

Alice sat by the hearth, ostensibly mending a torn stocking, while her eyes continued to drift towards the hypnotic movement of the flames, her mind satisfyingly quiet. She had come to enjoy these moments of solitude, where she could simply _be_ , without having to think about anything or anyone.

Sometimes it was very tiring, having to think about how to act around everyone, the right thing to say, the appropriate way to respond. All of her life, she had been schooled in these things, but somehow that didn't make it any easier. She often wished she could be more like Cora, who spoke her mind with such little fear, who said what she wanted and damned the consequences. But that would require of Alice something that she was not sure she had.

Uncas had made no further impositions on her since that afternoon in the woods, and as the days had passed, she found that they had stumbled into a relative ease of familiarity. He always smiled at her when he brought in the morning's load of firewood (and she smiled back, she supposed), offered to help her if she was carrying back something heavy from the stream or the well, and once, she noted, with some pride, he had complimented a dish she had cooked. If, on occasion, she caught his eyes resting on hers, what was it to her? She was prepared to dismiss his brashness in favor of the warm sense of contentment it gave her to think that someone might care about how she was doing.

Alice looked down at her mending, wondering when Nathaniel and Cora would be back. They had gone out earlier that morning, Nathaniel on the hunt for small game and Cora for apples and wild herbs, the excursion made much easier by the fact that they no longer had to act so secretively about leaving together.

She had come to realize through their time together that – despite his plainly unorthodox upbringing – Nathaniel was a good match for her sister, who needed someone as strong-willed as she. He would not confine her, he would let her be what it was in her nature to be, which surely would not have been the case had she married back in England. She wanted Cora to be happy. She hoped she would be here, with him.

Her ears pricked up at the sound of shouting outside; even in Mahican, she could tell it was Nathaniel, yelling for someone. She put down her half-finished work and ventured towards the door, wondering what would cause him to be quite so uncharacteristically loud. She gasped as she saw him running towards the cabin, blood streaming down the side of his face and neck, staining the right shoulder of his shirt.

Chingachgook and Uncas quickly appeared from behind the side of the house, coolly appraising the sight of Nathaniel's injury and then showering him with questions.

Alice began to feel a hard, cold fist in the bottom of her stomach. Something was very wrong. But what had happened? And why were they all speaking so that she could not understand?

"Where is Cora?" she asked, more loudly than she might have meant. It didn't matter; they continued talking without even looking up at her.

"Where is my sister?" This time it did not even emerge as a question, but more a half-screamed demand.

Nathaniel finally turned towards her, his eyes full of something she recognized as shame.

"She's gone."

"What happened to her?" Alice's voice was straining towards the edge of panic.

Nathaniel gazed at all of them in turn, as if unsure where to begin.

"We stopped for a moment…to rest…and we must have fallen asleep."

"You fell asleep?" questioned Chingachgook, his eyes narrow.

Nathaniel nodded, his eyes cast downwards.

"When we woke up, we were surrounded by a group of French, perhaps five, maybe six."

"Coureurs de bois?" asked Uncas.

"No. Deserters, I think."

"Pretty far south for that."

Nathaniel gave a shrug of his shoulders.

"One of them must have hit me in the head. When I came to, they were all gone. Cora too."

"What happened to your gun?" asked Chingachgook.

"Took it with them."

Chingachgook made a tight-mouthed grimace. Alice was aghast; surely they couldn't be comparing the loss of a firearm to the abduction of her sister?

"And so you just left her there?" she cried out. "You didn't think to go after them?"

"There were too many," he said to her, his eyes softening. "I couldn't get her back by myself."

He turned back towards his father.

"Should we go?"

"Yes," Chingachgook replied. He looked to Uncas. "Lend your brother your rifle."

Uncas shot both men a look of surprise.

"I'm not coming?"

"You won't be able to keep up, brother, not yet." Nathaniel dipped his head in the direction of Alice. "And we can't leave her alone."

Uncas offered only a resigned nod by way of reply.

Preparations were quickly made, Nathaniel and Chingachgook's movements filling the small space of the cabin as they loaded their powder horns and checked their ammunition. Wanting to stay out of their way but be useful somehow, Alice wrapped some smoked fish in cloth and tucked it into Nathaniel's pack.

The two men stepped out into the clearing, Alice and Uncas left standing on the porch of the cabin. Nathaniel looked back at her, a hard line of determination set on his mouth.

"I will find her, Alice."

She made a tiny, grim smile, partly to avoid crying.

Chingachgook, for his part, turned towards Uncas, speaking sternly to him in Mahican, just a few words, but she saw the younger man stiffen visibly, his eyes shuffling towards the ground.

And then they were gone, racing off into the distance, swallowed whole into the forest.

Alice looked over at Uncas. He was staring off at the distant point where the two men had disappeared.

"What did he say to you?"

He did not look at her.

"Nothing. It's not important."

She wrapped her arms around herself as a cool gust of wind caressed the side of her face. It was such a strange sensation, feeling utterly alone and adrift. She began to pray, as she had never prayed before, that he would keep his promise, and bring her back.


	12. Whole

The minutes passed by in torturous hours, the hours seemingly transforming into days. Night blanketed the sky, which had faded from a brilliant red into a ghostly shade of obsidian. Alice had abandoned any attempt at doing anything at all and sat quietly at the wooden table, chin resting in the cradle of her hands, her unfocused gaze giving no indication of the turmoil within her mind.

A bowl of sweet corn mash appeared by her elbow. She looked up to see Uncas standing near the end of the table, his dark eyes full of concern.

"You should eat."

She turned her face back.

"I'm not hungry."

He nudged the bowl closer to her.

"You should eat."

She did not move. He took a seat across the table from her.

"Here," he said, procuring a wooden spoon from nearby. "We'll both eat." He scooped a small serving from the bowl, blew lightly on it and swallowed.

"Your turn."

She looked down at the bowl, a faint curl of steam emerging from the surface of the food. It did smell good. Reluctantly, she pulled the spoon from the center of the mash and took a bite. The warmth slowly sank to the bottom of her empty stomach, which, having received that small offering, took it upon itself to demand more. She ate another spoonful.

As she was finishing the bowl, she realized that he was still there, watching her. She suddenly felt very self-conscious.

"That was good. Thank you," she said, laying the spoon back in the bowl. He said nothing, only giving her a small smile, before he stood, taking both items away and placing them on one of the cabin's small shelves.

Now that she was fully cognizant of his presence there, the silence between them was threatening to spill into unease.

"Uncas?" Had she never said his name out loud before?

He turned back towards her, his hair gleaming ruddy in the firelight.

"Talk to me. Tell me…tell me about the people who lived here."

"The Camerons?"

"Yes. Tell me about them."

He sat down again, his forearms planted firmly on the table's rough surface.

"What do you want to know?"

"I don't know…What were they like?"

His eyes were drawn down towards the tabletop, as he found a knot in the grain of the wood and began to distractedly brush against it with his thumb.

"Kind," he replied. "And generous. Always had a ready place at the table for you."

She realized as he spoke that they were, in fact, sitting at that same table.

"And you had known them for some time?"

"Almost six summers now. Before Lucy came."

"Lucy?"

"Their little girl."

Alice felt a catch in her throat as she remembered the little doll, the green petticoat. The emotions of the day began wash over her, and she suddenly sensed the heat of the hearth-fire, the small strain in her own breathing.

It was also clear, from his token responses, that this was not something Uncas wanted to continue talking about.

"I'm sorry," she said, half as an apology, half as some measure of sympathy.

She felt a pang of guilt, bringing up something that was clearly still painful. As she had been taught to do by so many matrons of etiquette, she searched for a new subject to broach. She latched onto the first thing she could think of.

"Are you going to tell me what your father said?"

He paused for a moment, looking up at her and exhaling deeply, his mouth set as if he had decided something.

"He told me to stay away from you."

Alice was genuinely confused. Stay away? As if they were not all living here together, in this place?

"Why do you need to stay away from me?"

"Alice…" he said slowly, the word holding the trace of a question, as if he was somehow surprised that she didn't understand.

The space suddenly seemed much warmer to Alice, far too warm, as her heart began to beat a rapid pulse she felt even at the ends of her fingertips.

"Alice," he said again, his deep voice catching on the vowels in such a way to make her breath come up short.

The way he was looking at her, with such untold intensity, it was if there was nothing else in the world but her, as if there was no yesterday, no tomorrow, there was only _now_.

How could she explain it? How could she account for the fact that he had skirted around the edge of the table, his eyes still pouring into hers, and _she had not moved_? That his face had come closer towards hers, his soft earthy scent lingering in the air, and her lips had parted a little, her eyes had drawn closed? That she had arched slightly towards him, her mouth meeting his, as her heart exploded in cascading waves inside her chest?

There was no explanation. There was no accounting.

As his lips searched hers, Alice felt as if all the disparate parts of herself, the countless pieces that had been separated out for as long as she had known, all came rushing back together, for one brief moment making her whole.

He pulled back a little, moving his hand round to catch the side of her face, and she opened her eyes, glimpsing a faint flush emerging on his copper skin. As he moved to kiss her again, she cried out with a stifled sob, her head turning suddenly from his.

What had she done?

She pulled away, pushing back the wooden bench as she rose, wanting to get as far away as she could as quickly as possible. She didn't want to look at him, to have to see the confusion and hurt written across his face, to have to acknowledge within his eyes what had just been shared between them.

How could she have done it? What had she become?

As she turned, her feet awkward and stumbling, he took hold of her wrist, the touch of his skin still searing on hers. She looked back, just once, catching his gaze.

"Don't," she said, almost a whisper.

She ran to the relative safety of her bed, pitching herself down upon it, her cheeks burning in shame. Her back turned from him, a quilt drawn protectively over the side of her face, she heard him making small movements, as if putting away the remnants of the evening's meal and banking the fire for the night. Like an answered prayer, the room grew dark. It did not seem like he was going to try to talk to her.

What if anyone was to know? What if Cora…? _Oh, Cora_.

Alice could no longer contain the tidal force of emotion; it swept over her, pulling her deeper and deeper into the darkness. She began to cry, as quietly as she could, her body wracked with periodic sobs. It went on for some time, until finally, at last drained and exhausted, she faded into a troubled sleep.


	13. Cold Ashes

She woke to the chatter of birds, weak streams of daylight filtering through the cracks in the window casements. There was a stale taste in her mouth, as if she had eaten something bitter and over-ripe; she wrinkled her nose and swallowed, running a quick tongue over her teeth.

She didn't understand why it was so quiet inside, why they had let her sleep so long. Where was everyone?

As her eyes cautiously cracked open, the memory of the previous day's events flooded over her. She groaned inwardly, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her face back into the bedding. One open ear remained alert as it continued to listen for any sounds of activity. There was nothing.

Alice sat up, stretching her stiff limbs and running her fingers absentmindedly through her hair. She looked around the cabin's small interior: everything was there, nothing was out of place. A small pile of firewood sat by the hearth, but yesterday's cold ashes still remained, waiting for someone to kindle a new fire from the glowing coals that lay beneath.

Where was he?

She went over to the small pantry, hunting for something to alleviate the growing gnaw in her stomach, her eyes floating over the shelves as her thoughts remained preoccupied.

Finding nothing that appealed to her, she pulled a chair over to the space before the hearth and waited, for what she wasn't exactly sure. Here, in the harsh light of the morning, it was almost impossible for her to comprehend the overheated passions of the night before, sentiments that had clearly clouded her judgment, causing her to act in wholly unsuitable ways. If, in moments of girlish fancy, she had ever imagined being kissed, such scenes took place within the boundaries of matrimony or, at the very least, a suitable engagement with a dashing gentleman of her own station. They certainly did not take place in deserted frontier cabins with savage, tattooed men who carried axes on their persons. She let her eyes slip closed, just for a moment shivering at the imprinted vision of his face so near to hers.

A stray thought occurred to her: what if he had fled? No, she reasoned, he would not have abandoned her here, all alone and with no protection. She stood up and went outside.

The clearing was deserted. A twinge of panic coursed through her. Even after circling around the back of the cabin, she saw no evidence of him at all, nothing to counteract the conclusion that she had been left totally and completely alone. She sat down on the porch and leaned against one of the standing beams, chin atop knees.

She had almost dozed off when she saw Uncas returning through the path by the corn fields, a rabbit carcass hanging from his shoulder. She stood up quickly, brushing off her skirts almost by reflex. As he passed by the front of the cabin, they briefly made eye contact – she offered him a small, tight-lipped smile, purely for politeness' sake, and he reciprocated – but he continued to walk past her, swinging the animal off his back as he made his way to the outdoor butchering space.

Having no desire to watch him skin the poor thing, she went back inside, assuming that he would come in when he was done. She fortified herself for the encounter, mentally rehearsing what she might say if he tried to impose himself on her again. Her words were calm but firm, as she made it clear that her temporary lapse in judgment was not to be taken advantage of, that her virtue would remain steadfast.

But he did not come inside. Soon after the sounds of butchering stopped, she began to hear the sharp crack of wood being split open. Stepping lightly onto the porch, she peeked around the side of the cabin to see him chopping logs near the woodpile, a sheen of sweat dusting his face. She jumped back, pushing herself flat against the cabin's exterior wall, worried that he might have seen her.

He worked all afternoon, attending to various outdoor tasks, never once entering the cabin or attempting to speak to her. Alice began to wonder if he planned to stay out all night as well.

As time passed, her frustration mounted. She felt confused and embarrassed, her torment heightened by the anxiety over her sister, the ever-present niggling fear that something unspeakably horrible had happened. Surely they would be back soon? Nathaniel and Chingachgook were expert trackers; surely they would have found Cora without too much trouble and been able to spirit her away from her captors?

Alice did her best to keep busy: she built the fire back up, adding too much wood to the flames, which resulted in the cabin becoming almost uncomfortably warm; she tried to continue work on her abandoned stocking, before noticing that the hole she was repairing was actually getting larger. She threw the work into her lap. At this rate, she thought, she would end up with a ruined stocking and a burned-down house for all her trouble.

It was only an hour or so before sunset when she heard a shout, much like she had heard the day before, only this time far less strident. She looked outside: it was Nathaniel and Chingachgook, and between them the clearly languishing form of Cora.

She ran to her sister, freed by an overwhelming sense of relief; how could she possibly have been preoccupied with anything else when Cora was in danger?

She took Cora into her arms, drawing her back into the cabin and back towards the small bed, bundling her up in quilts and blankets until only her face and part of her dark hair remained visible. She looked so small, almost like a little girl, Alice thought, as she knelt beside her sister and held both her hands in her own.

"You're safe now," she whispered. Cora said nothing, but gave her a tiny smile, her eyes still wide and searching.

"Do you feel alright? They didn't…harm you?"

Cora shook her head a little.

"But they would have, soon enough."

Alice wrapped her arms around her sister, rhythmically brushing back her hair from her face and humming some long-forgotten melody. Soon enough, Cora was asleep, her face still, her breath calm and even.

Placing Cora's hands on the coverlet, Alice stood up to see that all three of the men had gathered around the cabin's small table, eating a little and speaking Mahican in hushed tones. In the growing half-light of dusk, the fire was throwing hazy shadows across their features.

"She's asleep now," Alice said softly as she went over towards them. She looked at Nathaniel. "And not to be bothered."

He nodded dutifully. The room remained quiet, the only sound the crack of a burning log as it burst in two.

Even though he was not looking at her – he was not even physically near her – Alice could sense Uncas's presence. Her heart beat heavy; her breath strained within her chest. For a moment she wished he would look up at her, acknowledge her in some way, and she felt a strain of disappointment when he did not. The moment passed, and as she regained control over herself, she was horrified at her own impulsive thoughts. How intolerable it was that such a man as he was could cause such reactions in her!

No, she refused to succumb to these feelings. She was not a child; she had read novels. Everyone knew what happened to women who were unguarded with their virtue.

She had no other choice. She was loathe to abandon Cora when she was in such a state, but remaining here much longer would be a torment she was not sure she could bear.

"My sister will need some time to recuperate," she said, turning to Nathaniel. "But after that I still wish to be escorted to Albany." She paused. "How soon will it be until you all are ready to travel?"

Nathaniel looked up at her, his eyes unreadable.

"A fortnight," he replied. "Give or take a few days."

She nodded, sealing the verbal agreement now made between them. She turned on her heel, making her way towards the darkened bed and Cora's sleeping form, and did not look back.


	14. Company

The afternoon sun felt wonderful as it beat down upon Alice's neck and shoulders, her honey brown hair glinting with strands of gold. A few stray clouds dotted the horizon, the hint of a cool breeze dancing on her skin: all in all, it could not have been more perfect, save for the fact that she was feeling uncomfortably exposed, being clad only in her shift while her freshly-washed jacket and skirt lay drying on the grass.

She and Cora sat together in easy silence by the edge of the stream, taking pleasure both in the weather and each other's company. It had been difficult at first to convince Cora to accompany her; her sister had not left the cabin or its surrounding clearing since she had returned, and only once Nathaniel had agreed to lend her his rifle did she finally assent. Alice was not sure that Cora even knew how to fire it, but it seemed to give her a feeling of security and for that, at least, Alice was grateful.

Cora had slept all night and most of the next day following their return, waking only when Alice brought her some food and even then, her movements remained small and watchful. The smallest sound seemed to catch her attention, her eyes widening like a startled foal. It seemed like the best thing – both for Cora and herself – was for Alice to keep continually by her side, providing comfort and reassurance against any imagined danger. The mood in the cabin had likewise turned quieter, more subdued, in the days following; whether the assault itself had sobered Nathaniel's natural joviality or he simply felt uncomfortable acting in such a way around them, Alice wasn't sure. He and Uncas had taken to silently carving bowls and other household implements in the evenings, although from what she could see, Uncas was at the moment working on something else, something smaller, but she did not allow herself to observe any further than that.

After a time, however, Alice began to strain within their semi-enforced confinement and, after discovering in the oak chest two bars of lye soap rolled up in cotton cloth, her mind began to rotate around the notion of finally having something clean to wear. She was still a colonel's daughter and did not, once they finally reached Albany and with it civilized society, want to be taken for a common slattern.

It was a shame they could not fully bathe, the Camerons possessing no tub large enough and the stream being too shallow, but Alice was content to wash those parts of herself she thought most in need of a thorough cleaning. As she scrubbed over her knuckles and under her fingernails, she was surprised to see how brown and rough her skin had turned, the calluses dotting her palms tough and unyielding. With equal parts dismay and curiosity, she examined the raised lines of muscle now appearing along her tanned forearms. How vexing, she thought with a sigh, although she supposed the patroon's widow, the kindly Mrs. van Rensselaer, would still recognize her, even without the pliant, white hands she had once taken so much pride in.

Now, as they sat, Alice thought what it would be like to return to London, back into the company of her circle of friends, of her cousin Eugenie, of the society that she had left. Would they have changed? Would they think her changed? And what could she tell them of what she had experienced that could in any way be true to the reality of having lived through it? How could she begin to describe the rough frontiersmen who had shepherded her through the wilderness, risking their lives for hers, asking for nothing in return? Would they simply be mocked in parlors and drawing-rooms as rude country louts, to be made a farce of within some witty riposte? She could not bear to think of it. It would be best, then, to remain quiet, to keep them safely within the walls of her own memory, where they could not be tarnished, where they would remain forever as they were.

Their clothes were very nearly dry, and soon enough they would have to return, before the afternoon gave way to evening. Cora stretched out her legs, sighing contentedly, as she looked over at her sister and, with a seeming hesitancy, broke the silence.

"Alice, I must ask you…"

She waited for Alice's small nod before continuing.

"…that is, I have noticed a change in Uncas, how he behaves towards you. He has always been very attentive…"

"Cora…"

"Has something happened? While I was gone?"

Alice turned her face away from her sister's, staring out towards the shallow, gurgling stream, her cheeks growing warm.

"This is not something I wish to speak about."

"You know that I have only ever wanted your happiness…"

"Please, Cora."

They retreated back to silence, to the shelter of their own thoughts, each passing moment full of weight and portent.

"Are you sure you want to go?"

"I must."

Alice scrambled up off the ground to collect her clothes, deliberately shielding her face from her sister, who would clearly be able to read what was written upon it.


	15. Possessions

The traveling bag Nathaniel had given Alice was small – too small, she thought, to truly carry anything – but as she filled it, with ample room remaining, she began to realize just how little she possessed in the world.

Almost of the items, in fact, had come to her second-hand, after she had asked if she might make use of a few things from among the Camerons' undamaged possessions. Now packed inside was a small mirror, although Alice had found less and less reason to use it as the weeks had passed and was considering giving it to Cora, a pair of knitted woolen stockings, and a few hair pins. Without a cap, however, the pins were relatively useless, and Alice had taken to simply braiding her hair back to keep it out of the way. Nathaniel had also given her a thin deerskin, to wear over her shoulders if she became cold on their journey, and she folded it into a neat square, surprised at how soft and supple it felt against her skin. Her task complete – she would fill the rest of the bag in the morning with food and extra provisions – she laid it gently aside at the foot of the bed.

How strange it would be to return to her house in London, to her room with the powder blue wallpaper and windows facing the square, and see all her belongings, the things that once she could not have imagined living without! Her wardrobe full of silk taffeta and printed Indian cotton gowns, her silver combs and brushes, her tortoiseshell fans, even her weathered copy of _Pamela_ that hopefully still remained hidden, wedged as it was between her brocade headboard and the wall. Truthfully, she had not thought of her things in so long that it was somehow a surprise to realize that she still possessed them.

Tomorrow they would be leaving. She stood up, taking in the features of the cabin's small interior. After the morning, she would never see this place again.

Dinner that night was a motley affair, mostly an excuse to use the last of the stores that could not be brought with them on the trip to Albany. Cora was particularly quiet as they ate, Alice unusually talkative, as she showered Nathaniel with questions about the journey, what the terrain would be like, if the weather would be fair.

"How long will it take, do you think?"

"Two nights and a bit," he replied. "Maybe a little longer as we can't keep to the roads."

"Why not?"

"Anyone we'll come across won't look kindly on men like us escorting you both. Best to avoid any misunderstandings."

He paused to take another bite of food.

"And we will have to make a stop along the way," he continued.

"A stop? What for?"

"Don't you worry none, miss. We'll get you to Albany soon enough."

The room descended into silence again as they each returned to their meals. The store of nervous energy Alice had felt all day was beginning to diminish; her muscles felt achy and tired, as if her body were already adjusting to the harsh pace of travel.

She quickly glanced across the table at Uncas, who seemed uncommonly preoccupied with his food. Cora was right: he had changed. He did not look at her anymore (as far as she could tell), he avoided her company, and he had not spoken directly to her since the evening they had been left together.

_Can you really blame him? You told him to let you alone._

Perhaps he no longer cared for her at all. Perhaps he was simply counting the days and nights until she would at last be gone, until he was free of her. It was all for the best, then, that she should leave. She would be doing him a kindness.

None of these assertions managed to displace the icy grasp that Alice could sense forming in the bottom of her stomach.

There was little to do, after the meal was over and Alice and Cora had tidied up around the hearth. Everything was stored away, or ready to go with the sunrise. There was a palpable air of finality about the place, which Alice had always before associated with the excitement of travel, with the thrill of being on the way to somewhere new, but this was different. It was melancholy, like a faint requiem.

Ready for sleep, she made her way over to the bed – Cora and the three men had gone outside to enjoy one last hour of the evening among the pale light of the stars – only to have something catch her eye, something small sitting atop her traveling bag where nothing had been there before.

After stooping to pick it up, she sat hesitantly at the edge of the bed, examining the object that lay within the hollow of her palm.

It was a wooden carving, not expertly made, but capturing the essence of its subject, which, in this case, was the rounded shape of a fawn, a tight spiral of body and spindly legs, notches marking the tufts within two extended, wide-brimmed ears. She held it lightly with her fingertips, biting her bottom lip, trying to take a few shallow breaths without succumbing to tears. She almost did not want to look at it, to think about all that it held, but she could not take her eyes away.

After a time, the tightness in her chest diminished, and she lay down upon the bed and closed her eyes, the wooden figure wrapped firmly in the hand that she curled against her heart.


	16. Unbound

They followed the path of a river through the mountains, keeping, as Nathaniel had forewarned, from any major trails or roads, until the river itself emptied out into a broad valley surrounded by rolling hills and wide blankets of pine trees.

As always, the men's steps were agile and sure-footed as they moved across the forest floor, rifles held aloft, the pace clearly being slowed by the presence of the women. Even with her skirts bunched high in her hands, Alice could barely hope to match their stride. They were as much a part of the natural landscape as the trees and rocks, and in their easy, fluid movements she was reminded of nothing so much as the muscular grace of an animal's gait.

Uncas had not spoken to Alice, nor she to him, after her discovery of the carving. She had waited almost all of the first day of travel for him to approach her, but he did not, and she lacked the courage to say anything, or even simply thank him for his gift. Her stomach clenched in tight knots with the idea that they would never have a chance to speak before they departed company, nor properly bid each other farewell, but she still could not broach such a topic, especially as he kept his distance, seemingly so preoccupied. All that was left to her was to snatch furtive, low-lidded glances as she followed behind his retreating form.

Their second day of travel dawned cold and clear. By the mid-point of the afternoon, as Alice began entertaining visions of finally stopping for the night – although she knew it would probably be hours before that time came – Nathaniel slowed their pace and turned them towards a broad copse of cedars. As they moved into the shaded woodland, the ground began a gradual incline downwards, finally leveling out onto the rocky bank of a rippling spring. She first noticed the unpleasant smell, hanging heavy and fetid in the air, then the delicate arcs of steam that seemed to tumble from the top of the water.

Nathaniel had halted a pace or so from the water's edge.

"Our stop, miss."

"Why? What for?" she asked as she approached him carefully, watching her footing over the loose rocks.

He grinned.

"We thought you might like to have a hot bath."

Alice was taken aback. On the one hand, the thought of washing out in the open, where anyone could come along, and, worst of all, immersing herself within that particular smell, was not appealing in the slightest. On the other, it was a hot bath. She hadn't been fully clean for months.

He seemed to take her indecision as an acceptance.

"Here, we'll give you both some privacy," he said, looking at the two sisters. "We'll just be up at the top of the hill. Yell when you're done, so'n we can have a wash, too."

The three men began to trek back into the trees, gradually disappearing against the foliage.

Alice looked over at her sister, whose raised eyebrows indicated that she was seriously considering Nathaniel's recommendation. Cora moved over to the water, trailing her fingers in the steaming surface.

"Alice, it's warm," she said, pleadingly, as she began to unlace her bodice.

And with that, she gave in.

They both quickly stripped down to their shifts and waded in, their darkened hair trailing in watery plaits down their backs.

Alice felt wonderful; she was light and buoyant, the tips of her toes shifting along the spring's sandy bottom as she moved into the central depths. Above all, she was gloriously warm, the heat and damp causing a shimmer of perspiration to break out across her temples. She could no longer even notice the smell.

She lifted her feet up and with her open palms made a few tentative strokes into the water. Flipping onto her back, she floated idly, her eyes caught for a moment within the vastness of the pale blue sky. She felt free, untethered, as if bound by nothing but the faint lap of the water. Her thoughts eddied and swirled around one another, loosing into unfamiliar patterns and shapes.

_What would it be like to live in such wildness, to be so unbound? How would it feel to be surrounded not by walls, but solely by open sky?_

Cora's voice pulled her back. She had not realized how long they had been in the spring.

"Are you ready?"

Alice nodded, her eyes surreptitiously scanning the tree line and finding it empty.

They moved out of the water – the first few moments a vicious assault from the chill – and into the wooded area just beyond the spring's reach. There they would wait for their shifts to dry out a little before getting dressed again. Alice slid onto a relatively clean rock, wringing out her hair and combing it through with her fingers, as Cora called out to Nathaniel that they could come down.

She could hear them as they made their way to the water's edge, packs and rifles being discarded among the rocks, the soft sweep of fabric and leather stockings against skin. There was a short series of splashes and then another.

Turning her gaze a little to the left, Alice realized that the men were only obscured from her sight by a low-hanging branch. She reached out tentatively, pushing it aside just a few inches.

The two brothers stood half-emerged in the spring, faded tattoos marking their chests, one pale and one bronze, a study in contrasts. But there was clearly such an ease between them, borne, she knew, from shared experience and life-long fraternity, that they seemed almost of a matched set. She watched as they began to tease and chaff one another, just splashing at first, but then escalating to a full-fledged contest of will as each grappled and fought to pitch the other head-first into the water.

It pained her a little to see Uncas laughing and smiling so widely at his brother's playful attack. How long had it been since he had looked so happy? She thought about all the ways that she had seen him – ferocious in battle, all savage eyes; laid low and weak by an opponent's knife; pain etched across his features as she ran from his embrace – and realized that this moment, just as he was now, was how she wanted to remember him, how she wanted him to appear when he at last arrived in her dreams.

She didn't understand this feeling within her. How could her heart beat so wildly and yet feel so heavy? Why could she not turn away, as if she would never have her fill of looking at him? She wanted to reach out, as if he was merely an arm's-length away, and lay her hand across the wide sweep of his face.

"Alice!"

As she released the branch, it swung back into place with a jolt, loosening a handful of autumn leaves that fluttered shyly towards the ground. She turned her gaze downward and refused to meet Cora's eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all you fact-checkers out there, I know that Saratoga Springs is not actually geothermal. But isn't it so much more fun this way?


	17. A Slow Flame

Alice woke a little before dawn, as the dark curl of the sky yielded to the delicate gray haze filling the eastern horizon. A chilled mist hung in the air and she held her arms more tightly against her body, rubbing them with tightly-fisted hands. Along with the cold, she felt faintly nauseous, or perhaps it was hunger; she couldn't tell.

They would reach Albany today, Nathaniel had said the night before, by the late afternoon or early evening, depending on their pace. It had been determined that Chingachgook and Uncas would remain behind just outside the city while Nathaniel accompanied Alice and Cora into town; they thought, then, to find sanctuary with the patroon's widow, who might, in turn, be willing to intervene with garrison commander and help Alice petition for passage back to England. She hoped that she would not see General Webb. She had not liked him from the first – in particular his sneering, piggy eyes and his clammy grip as he seized her hand to kiss it – and she did not think she could look at him without having visions of her father being set upon by blood-thirsty Hurons.

She turned onto her side and burrowed towards the ground, hoping to conserve some warmth. Her stomach continued to gnaw.

The light soon began to change, a slow flame building upon itself, casting the sky with lilac and the faintest gossamer pink she could imagine. She realized that in all her weeks and days on this continent, she had never seen the sun rise or set in exactly the same way, never the same shades or patterns, never the same shadowed diffusion of light.

The others were awake before long, sitting up and then sharing in a light breakfast of dried meat and a pair of apples Cora had found the day before. Alice took a slice of the fruit, but just the smell of it caused her tender stomach to rise up in protest. Stealthily, she handed it back to Cora, hoping nobody had noticed. She didn't understand why she felt so poorly. More than likely, it had been something she ate the day before, although they had all eaten the same thing, and no one else seemed the worse for it.

They walked all morning, through empty meadows and pinched valleys, until they came across the broad floodplain of the Hudson, whose path they would parallel until they reached their destination. Alice said little as they traveled and even as they stopped at mid-day to rest, her mind occupied with trying to fight off the intensifying waves of nausea. Willing it away, however, seemed to do very little.

She found that her physical distress had even begun to dampen her spirits: she was struck by an overwhelming wash of sadness, originating from somewhere deep and unknown within her.

As they continued in the afternoon, Alice realized that perhaps she had made a mistake in not eating. With each step, she felt more lightheaded, and she found it harder to keep up as she could not fully keep her balance. Her hands and arms began to tremble slightly, although she tried to hide it by sinking her hands deep into her pockets, pressing one set of fingers flat against her thigh and curving the other around the softly-shaped edges of the wooden carving.

Emerging from the forest's red-gold spray of foliage, they found themselves before the expanse of a shallow river which at one point dropped rather precipitously, resulting in a rocky, jagged edge of waterfalls.

Nathaniel turned to look back at the two sisters.

"We have to cross here, above the falls." He had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the sound of the rushing water.

"Cross it? Here?" asked Cora.

"It's not so deep, maybe a foot or so." He stopped while he spoke, his rifle held compactly under his arm. "From the other side, it's only three leagues to Albany. We'll be there by nightfall."

The party began to move closer towards the river's edge. Alice took one step and then another, but she found it increasingly hard to keep breathing. Her body seemed in outright revolt, covered as it was in a thin layer of cold sweat, her legs no longer responding to her mind's demands that she keep moving.

Nathaniel's words echoed in her head… _three leagues to Albany_ … _by nightfall_. This was it, then: the promise of civilization, of returning to everything she had known, and yet now that it was within reach, she could not make herself move towards it.

It was difficult for her to comprehend what was happening, as it overwhelmed her so quickly; her throat choked with stifled sobs, hot tears flooding over her cheeks, all the while hearing only the echoes of a small voice from her heart. Over and over it said the same word, with an impassioned resolve that shook her deeply: _no_. This voice held her, surrounded her, until her legs could no longer bear her weight and she collapsed into a billowing heap on the ground, palms held tightly over her face as tears seeped between her fingers.

Her conscious mind had lost the battle. It had ceased to form fully realized thoughts and succumbed to the intensity of emotion: fear, anger, embarrassment, loneliness, and the overwhelming rawness of sorrow in her comprehension that the only thing she wanted in the world was the one thing the world seemed to insist she could never have.

She could feel Cora's arms around her, yet she hung there passively, continuing to shake and cry because, she began to realize, she didn't know how to stop. The dam within her had broken, unleashing a flood of such violence and power, she thought it might be possible to drown within it. Cora's hand smoothed the hair on the back of her head as she made small wordless sounds of reassurance.

"What's wrong, Alice?" she asked. There was no response.

"Come, it's not so far to Albany. We can find help. You can get some rest."

Alice shook her head violently against her sister's body. She took large gulps of breath, trying to steady herself, so that she could finally say what she needed to.

"I do not wish to go," she whispered. "Please do not make me."

She looked up over Cora's shoulder, her vision still thick and blurry, to see Uncas just beyond, looking intently at them with his arms lightly crossed over one another. How shameful it was to have him see her like this! But she could see, even through her tears, that there was no scorn or even pity written within his gaze. She buried her face deep against Cora before she could read anything else there.

"Why don't you want to go?" Cora asked quietly. "Has something happened?"

Alice did not answer, not because she didn't care to, but because she couldn't. She did not know what had happened to her. And even as her ability to form rational thoughts returned, she gained no clarity. How could it be, that after all her insistence that she be taken back, all the planning and considerations involved to simply get her this far, she would choose, at this moment, to change her mind?

Eventually the crying slowed, and she lay in Cora's lap, still and spent, until the men realized that they would be going no further that day. She must have slept a little, for after a time, Alice began to hear the sounds of a campfire being made; she tilted her head towards the darkening sky, the first stars now beginning to appear along the eastern horizon.


	18. Collision

The wind blew through the trees, a soft susurrus of rustling leaves in the otherwise shadowy silence of the night. Alice slept fitfully, dozing at times, then waking with the smallest sound: the shriek of some nocturnal animal, the metallic click of a rifle being handled, Nathaniel quietly waking someone and then settling down to sleep as he finished the evening's first watch.

She could get no rest from the unbidden thoughts and questions that washed over her. Now that she had made her choice – and clearly she had made one – how would she begin to live? What sort of life could she make for herself here, with none of the comforts of home, all wild and foreign? Could she truly be happy in this place?

She was filled with the sudden desire to move, which often happened when sleep came uneasily to her. Getting to her feet as quietly as she could, she edged along the outskirts of their camp to the sharp bank of the river, the sound of the falls – a primal collision of rock and water – gradually increasing as she moved closer. It was so dark, only the barest moonlit crests of spray were visible. She sat down, arms wrapped around her knees, watching with fascination the play of light upon the water.

She did not even notice at first the nudge of moccasin against her foot.

As she looked up suddenly, she was confronted with a pair of shining brown eyes, which began to move closer and closer towards her as he lowered to a crouch.

"You shouldn't go far."

Her chest tightened; he was just so _close_.

With a hand to steady himself, Uncas sat down next to her, his long legs extending along the ground. They sat in a stilled quiet, the only noise the hushed rumble of water just beyond.

"Are you not going back to England, then?"

"No," she replied, shaking her head a little.

"Good."

She had not expected him to say such a thing. Nor did she know how to respond. As moments passed, the silence between them began to gnaw at her; she searched for something to say, if only to stop its advance.

"Thank you for the carving. It… it's beautiful."

He smiled a little and nodded, but did not reply. How could she get him to speak to her? All Alice knew was that she wanted to hear his voice, like a drowning man gasps for air.

"Where will we go now?"

He took a slow, even breath. She could feel the warmth of him beside her, the momentary brush of his arm against her sleeve.

"I'm not sure. We'll talk tomorrow, figure out where to spend the winter."

"Where were you all going before you found us?"

"West. Beyond the lakes."

"Why? What's there?"

What foolishness was coming out of her mouth? Did she even care?

"It's the western camp of the Delaware. My mother's people."

"Is she still there?"

"She died," he answered, his voice more distant. "A long time ago."

"Oh… I'm sorry."

He shrugged his shoulders a little, as if that was all he could offer her.

"So what would you all do, at the western camp of the Delaware?" she asked cautiously.

"Not much to do in winter. It's too cold for hunting." He looked over at her. "I'm supposed to get married."

Frozen water surged through her veins. In all the time they had been together, she had never imagined that he might have already formed an attachment with another. Was there someone waiting dutifully for him, some girl with long black hair like his?

"To whom?"

"I don't know."

A small relief, perhaps, but it still did not alleviate the bitter ache lodged deep in the center of her chest.

"Congratulations."

"I don't know that I will, though."

Alice turned up to face him, her soft brown eyes searching his.

"Why not?"

"Well, no respectable girl will be happy with the idea of sharing her _wiquoam_ with a Yengeese brother-in-law and two white women.

"And I don't know that I want to." He smiled at her a little, his eyes glinting in the moonlight. "At least not with a Delaware girl. Too bossy."

Uncas picked up her hand from where it rested on her knee and held it between his palms. She was shocked first by his boldness, then by how warm his hands felt surrounding hers, his fingers threaded through her own. She had a brief impulse to pull away, but did not.

"Why did you change your mind?" he asked, his eyes centered on the pale blue veins running just beneath her skin, his thumb softly tracing along their path.

What could she tell him? She wasn't even sure she knew the answer herself; her heart was not quite so free with its secrets. She answered in a half-truth, offering only what she could say with certainty.

"I couldn't leave my sister. And there's nothing left for me in England."

He nodded, his eyes turning distant, unfocused.

"And you want to stay here with us?"

"If you'll let me," she answered quietly.

He looked straight down at her, and the world began to go soft at the edges. She lowered her gaze for a moment – the product of a lifetime of instilled modesty – but then glanced up again, losing herself in the bottomless dark pools of his eyes. Time slowed; a single heartbeat filled an hour, or a lifetime.

Slowly he moved a hand up towards her face, catching the rounded edge of her cheekbone with the tips of his fingers. It was all too much, she thought, as she began to tremble.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her towards him, enveloping her in a circle of solidness and warmth. So long ago, under a crashing waterfall, he had held her so, keeping her safe from the blood-soaked images that hacked their way across her thoughts. But even here, the true threat long past, she felt the same: secure, protected from the dangers of the world. For all her childish daydreams of a savior in a red coat with gold braid along the shoulder, how could she have known that it was in the arms of a savage that she would finally feel the safest?

"I don't understand…any of this," she whispered.

"Why do you have to?"

She tilted her head up towards his, shyly searching for his eyes through half-lowered lashes and finding them, full of tenderness and fire. She realized at that moment that she would be willing to forsake everything – all that she had, all that she had ever been given – simply to have him continue looking at her in the way that he was.

They moved towards each other purely by instinct, lips at first meeting tentatively, as if part of an opening salvo; but as their breaths grew heavier, Alice was filled with a fierce hunger, as if there would never be enough. The ground itself seemed to be falling out from underneath her, but she paid it no notice, as he was plummeting with her, arms tight around each other as they braced for the impact. She understood why she had run from him before – the unrelenting ache within her was so new, so terrifying – but at this moment she was no longer afraid.

She felt as if she had shed some part of herself, something heavy and confining, leaving her somehow different, lighter.

She laid her head across his collarbone, her face tucked into the warm hollow where his neck and shoulder met. Could she stay here forever, and never be found? She listened to the deep and even spacing of his breaths, a rhythmic movement that hypnotically echoed the reverberations of her heart.

"You should go back to sleep," he said eventually. "Long day tomorrow."

But Alice had already fallen asleep, her honeyed hair trailing against her shoulders and along her face, a faint beatific smile half-formed across the softness of her mouth.


	19. A Great Unknown

Alice woke to the warmth of a glistening morning sun and the sound of hushed voices. She rose slowly and stretched, with the realization that the night had passed without dreams, without wakefulness.

"Mornin'," said Nathaniel, who was sitting cross-legged several paces from her. "Hungry?" He indicated the small pile of dried deer meat in front of him.

She shook her head. Rationally, she knew she should eat, yet she felt her stomach tingle and turn skittish, not with the violent upset of the day before, but rather with a sense of anticipation, of the sensation that something had shifted within her formation of the world, bringing newness and possibility.

Cora was kneeling by a small fire, feeding small branches and twigs into the flame. She looked up at Alice through the wispy streams of smoke.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," Alice replied. Her eyes quickly glanced over the open space around them, looking for Uncas, but not wanting to be obvious. He was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Chingachgook.

"They went to town." Nathaniel was not even looking at her as he spoke, and she blushed to have been found out so easily.

"What for?"

"Supplies, food. We're near out of powder. We need to restock before we go."

"Where are we going?"

"West, to Cantuckee."

"To the Delaware?"

He paused and looked at her askance, through slightly narrowed eyes.

"Yes, to the Delaware."

"Why can't we go back to the cabin?"

"There's not enough winter meat. Not for the five of us. And the repairs we made were fine for summer, but not for when the snow starts falling and the wind picks up. With the Delaware there'll be enough food and a spare _wiquoam_ or two."

She tried to envision herself living in an Indian camp and found it increasingly difficult. Even recalling the camp of the Huron did not help very much, as she could only picture it through the reflections of her own half-remembered fear. Everyone had stared at them, Cora, Duncan and herself, jeering in a language she could not understand…

"Alice…"

She was pulled from her thoughts by the sound of her name, which he almost never used.

"If you want to stay with us, you need to understand what you're doing."

"I do understand…"

"I don't think you do. This is not an easy life. Especially for someone…" – he paused, staring at her, head cocked to the side – "…for someone not born to it."

Alice felt as if her insides were slowly crumbling. Is this what they all thought of her? That she was weak, that she would run at the slightest difficulty? Yet a spark of defiance began to smolder within her.

"Have I been idle these past months? Did I once complain?"

"It's not the same. We're trappers, nomads. I know Cora will want a home and a roof over her head, but until that point, there'll be no place of our own. There may be weeks, or even months, when you won't see walls around you. No hearth. No bed."

She swallowed, and bit the insides of her lips. Had she been too hasty in her decision? But then she thought of him, the lightness of his fingers as they had curled tentatively around her waist.

"I want to stay…with my sister. I can do what is necessary."

"Don't misunderstand. We're happy you're going to stay. Cora, myself…all of us. But it will be hard."

Alice nodded a little and gazed into the growing flames of the fire. A feeling of trepidation quelled the excitement she had felt earlier. This was her life now. But where did she belong? Where was her home? She wanted, as was the way with women, to one day be married, to have a family; would this be denied to her? She envisioned for one moment a child with her rounded chin and straight black hair bound up in braids, but then dismissed it, shocked even at her own wayward thoughts.

She could no longer deny that a connection had been formed between herself and Uncas, something that drew her mind towards him unbidden, something that caused her breath to quicken when he looked down on her with his dark and tranquil eyes. He was not a man like any she had known before, but for some reason the differences no longer seemed to matter. He had established himself as her protector, and she had clung to him, trusting him as she had no other. Beyond this, however, was a great unknown. What would a future between them even look like? Her eyes still fell absently on their campfire, their surface cloudy and pensive.

The rest of the morning and the afternoon passed slowly, in an unceasing quiet that Alice found difficult to bear. As soon as she sat down, she felt the need to stand up and move, and once she was up, all she wanted was to be still. Perhaps if her hands had been occupied, if there had been something to do, she might have felt less agitated. But she knew, truthfully, that she was waiting for him, and as her eyes glanced up with every sound and movement of the forest, she was disappointed to not see him approaching.

She was therefore surprised to see Chingachgook alone striding almost silently through the center of the camp, his weathered face hard and set. The heavy packs that had been carried across his shoulders were soon slung to the ground with considerable forcefulness.

Uncas followed soon after, almost running to catch up. He called out to his father, almost plaintively, in Mahican, but the older man did not turn around. Instead, his eyes shifted over and caught Alice's, with a look that made her realize exactly what had been the cause of such discord. She froze, not knowing what do to, and wished that, just for a moment, she could disappear completely.

Chingachgook finally turned around to face his son. He murmured a few words, the grim line of his mouth nearly motionless, and then waited, as if expecting no further challenge to his declaration.

But even with lowered eyes, Uncas answered him, and as the words were spoken, she could see Chingachgook's broad shoulders begin to sag, the determination cleanly wiped from his face. He turned away and walked off into the trees, not looking back.

Slipping his pack off his shoulder, Uncas dropped to a crouch and gazed off to where his father had disappeared. She watched as he tiredly rubbed his hands against his face. There was something in his posture, in the lost expression in his eyes, that made her want to go to him; had they been alone, she might have, but with the others nearby, she could not be free with her sentiments.

"What happened?" Cora murmured towards Nathaniel.

"Ask him," he replied, his face solemn as he nodded towards Uncas.

But Uncas simply shook his head a little as he got to his feet. He looked over at Alice, seemingly seeing her for the first time, and his face softened, warmth seeping back into his eyes. He approached her slowly, and dropped to the ground next to where she sat. They remained in silence for a time, both looking out into the distant landscape beyond.

"I don't understand…what you said to each other," she said quietly.

"I tried to talk to him, to tell him…" He paused, taking a breath. "He was angry, disappointed that I had not chosen as he would have me choose. He said…that you weren't of our people."

"And what did you tell him?"

"That Nathaniel was not of our people, but he was still his son."

Alice's heart broke a little; she had no wish to come between Uncas and his father, although she clearly was. But what could she do? She could not change who she was, nor how she felt.

With a motion so slow it went almost unnoticed, she placed her palm down onto the ground next to where his lay, and curled her fingers around his.

"Will he come back?" she asked.

"In time."

As the sun made its last steps towards the horizon, Chingachgook did, in fact, return, and took his place at the edge of the fire. He did not look at either Uncas or Alice, who were sitting across from each other, but remained silent, while they all tucked into a hastily-prepared evening meal.

Even as she stared into the twisting movement of the flames, Alice realized that Uncas was looking at her, and she felt her cheeks turn warm. She wished she could explain it simply by her proximity to the fire's reach, but she knew better. His eyes were playful, the hint of a smile flashed across his mouth, stretching towards his broad cheekbones, and, even with Chingachgook so nearby, she could not help but smile back before she looked away. The warmth continued to spread through her body, into her chest and belly, down her arms and through her fingertips. It was as if her heart was a lantern, illuminating the night with her happiness.

She knew she could not see the future, and what difficulties it might bring, but she had this moment. It would always be hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this story, it continues (partially) in my one-shot piece, [The Flames](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7333324)...


End file.
